


Ves-Ka Gan, Refrain

by The_Rolling_Tomes



Series: Other Worlds (Tempered in Mid-World, Razwan Bahir, Phase Two) [2]
Category: Dark Tower - Stephen King, Runescape (Video Games)
Genre: And Apologies to Sprite (Beverage) Fans, Crossover (Transition to Third and Final Setting), Deviates From Canon, Dissociative State (In-Depth), Elements from Various Stephen King Works, Gen, Gunslingermad, Inprisonment (Brief), Post-Dissociative Withdrawal Into Self, Shooting Guns, With Apologies to Al Pacino Fans, headcanons
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-18
Updated: 2020-02-18
Packaged: 2021-02-27 21:34:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,607
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22782607
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Rolling_Tomes/pseuds/The_Rolling_Tomes
Summary: Fic two of three in the Other Worlds sub-series, and part of the transition of Razwan's fic-verse from Gielinor, through Mid-World, through another world (yet to be disclosed), and finally into the setting in which I want to set her, Nomad, Sliske, and a few others.Nomad's ka-tet gains a new member, and a piece of the puzzle standing between them and their destination.
Series: Other Worlds (Tempered in Mid-World, Razwan Bahir, Phase Two) [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/961779
Comments: 3
Kudos: 3





	Ves-Ka Gan, Refrain

** Preface**

Something common to all worlds is the phenomenon of faith, or belief where evidence is absent. It’s as true of Mid-World as it is of Keystone Earth, or in the Territories as it is Gielinor. 

Well… a period of Gielinor’s history, anyway. There’ve been times where the objects of _those_ faiths are downright chatty.

Most will never meet a gunslinger or World Guardian firsthand. Most will never come within a thousand miles, wheels, or skips of the stone of those slated for extraordinary purpose. Most will be born, live, and die without ever gaining so much as a tantalizing glimpse of the breadth and depth of their universe. The wholly material dirt needs to be tilled for the year’s plantings. Quarterly expense reports need to be filed. Entire lives are measured in the comfortably unremarkable. Nothing reaches the untapped modern mortal save hearsay passed between too many individuals or generations to share even a smoking booth with the truth. 

Yet faith persists in all these worlds, in every world. 

Sometimes, and with little rhyme or reason understood by the mundane being, the divine reaches out. Like a lonely, touch-starved child whose impossible longevity renders them distant from a favored twinkle in the finite, divinity seeks contact. 

A gunslinger and his ka-tet pass through Calla Bryn Sturgis on their course to the Dark Tower, demonstrating the truth of the Tower’s existence and the enduring nature of ka to its residents. A god-imbued mortal stands in direct defiance of other gods’ aims, or the aims of one nearing godhood, and succeeds. Vessels aerial and nautical become lost to the Bermuda Triangle.

Sometimes - often, really - that contact between mundane and divine isn’t so direct. It hints. To gently misquote Mid-World’s Man in Black: something darkles and tincts between the two. To outright paraphrase Keystone Earth’s Man in Black: it’s like a novelist writing far-out things, perpetually enmeshed in conflict between between clarity and incomprehensibility. Much like what exists between the author’s mind and the blank page before them, the line of communication between mortals and divinity is of questionable quality. There’s static, and the translator’s muddling through with two years of remedial language courses in which they received a sweat-drenched C.

With luck (or, for those who don’t put stock in such things, by dint of ka), the message comes through. Often - but not _too_ often - the poor mortals are obliterated by its means of conveyance.

The Dark Tower exists in all these worlds. Like faith, it is a constant, though its expression in each world varies.

In Mid-World (via End-World), the Dark Tower is a tower in truth, a great dark spire at the center of a field of roses which winds its way up into a slowly revolving mass of clouds, well beyond sight. In Keystone Earth, a single rose in an abandoned lot represents that linchpin binding all worlds together. In the Territories, a many-faceted crystal Talisman serves both as its proxy and the lens through which it’s seen.

Gielinor knows the Dark Tower, too, albeit by a different name. Thought to be one of the tools created and wielded by elder gods, it stands apart, older even than those long-lived beings, the shaping and reshaping of its physical form irrelevant to its permanence. 

An easy mistake to make when mortals write its history, or when those elder gods’ memories accumulate an obscuring patina of dust, the distinction between _found_ and _made_ muddied by time. Little mistranslations, little misinterpretations. An object whose influence on structure, fate, chronological order, and everything is so encompassing that historians with a flair for storytelling (to say nothing of comparatively minor, single-universe architects) must confine its parameters to something… well, finite.

 _Gan_ and _ves-ka gan_. Creator and chronicle.

The song of Can’-Ka No Rey - the Red Fields of None - is also sung through an object known as the Needle.

  
  
  


………

  
  
  


_In the desert, I saw a creature, naked, bestial,_ _  
__Who, squatting upon the ground,_ _  
__Held his heart in his hands,_ _  
__And ate of it._ _  
__I said, “Is it good, friend?”_ _  
__“It is bitter—bitter,” he answered;_ _  
__“But I like it because it is bitter,_ _  
__“And because it is my heart.”_

  
Stephen Crane - “In the Desert”

  
  
  


Tal’feek’s first encounter with a robot - and with that gunslinger’s instinct known as the Touch - was nearly his last.

Their trio had begun noticing the slow, unobtrusive creep into each other’s minds a week ago. They spoke less and less, each assuming they all preferred companionable silence to idle chatter, but a few sentences begun by one and finished by another - each time airing thoughts thought to’ve been entertained alone but were shared mutually - had done away with the idea. Their collective cautious excitement at seeing their first building since the vampires’ abandoned tent pavilion coursed quietly between them and along their link to the Tower.

By the time they reached the boxy metal structure, identified by a sputtering readout of lights as _Repository Fourteen: authorized access by Sombra personnel only_ , they moved as one to the door without conversation.

Nomad coughed, waving his free hand in front of himself and putting an end to silence’s lease. “A shame the Old Ones didn’t preserve buildings as well as they did Tal’feek’s toy.” Rust, flakes and powder alike, showered him as he worked the door open.

Tal’feek clutched his little metal can to himself, the treasure he’d discovered glinting in the sun on the road west, careful not to dent the thin surface into which he’d bored a neat line of holes. The sound of Nomad’s voice was familiar yet foreign after so long a quiet. “Maybe there’ll be more inside there? I want to make a better one, fix it so the tune’s clear.”

“I think you did just fine with that one.” Razwan gave Tal’feek’s arm a squeeze and peered around Nomad, eyeing the green can and less perturbed-looking than Tal’feek himself felt. “But if we find more, I’m calling dibs on-”

“MONITOR PARADOX HEINLEIN!” Metal whirred and clicked somewhere in the darkness beyond the doorway, accompanying a somewhat nasal - but impassioned - voice. “FOR THE HORDE! No, no-no, that’s better. Communication protocol override Bethesda, bypassing damaged systems and clipped data. Dipolar neural net accessing secondary and backup programs. Bypass established, corrupted elements quarantined. Good morning!”

Tal’feek’s feathers bushed out in alarm and he settled into half a crouch, feet splayed. He saw one of the plates - orizas, Parkus had called them - find its way into Razwan’s hand. He heard her draw air through her teeth in a hiss.

Nomad remained silent. One of his revolvers pointed into the darkness.

Tal’feek felt air turn to lead in his lungs, his joints going shock-limbered. He’d known a little of Nomad’s reputation back home - rumor had reached his flight group about the man’s prolific lethality - but this was different. There had been an empty hand in front of Nomad, one dropping casually back to his side after wrenching the door wide, and now it was filled with the new weapon. The gun. 

Not just uncanny, but Nomad had drawn with genuinely preternatural speed. Its barrel pointed into the aged-looking building with the force of an imperative, with metallic finality that reflected a narrow band of cloud-shattered sunset from the west. The silver-blue wood of its grip had been burnished gold where it was visible between Nomad’s fingers.

 _Gunslinger,_ Tal’feek thought. _I’m beginning to understand what that means._

The too-smooth, cozening voice from within seemed unaware of the danger. “Welcome, sais! It’s been long since I’ve had visitors, say true! Say delah, as would’ve been spoken in Gilead that was. Come in and make yourselves at home. Would you care to have your cards read?”

 _Cozening. Why that?_ Tal’feek rose slowly from his half-crouch and remained alert. The voice’s owner sounded kindly enough, but the word had occurred to him and attached itself to the voice as one magnet did to its complimenting number. _Cozening._

He didn’t get much time to ponder it. A sound like angry insects beating against glass accompanied a bloom of light inside the building. Tubes arranged above and along the walls distributed a sputtering, blue-green introduction along the length of their residence, sullen stuff growing gradually more intense and offering a look at the interior of Repository Fourteen.

What Tal’feek saw courtesy of the new light seemed… sterile. Disconnected from the beating heart of life. Everything was metal - the gray-green shelving, the lighter gray walls, the floor itself. Cans sturdier than his own roadside prize lined the shelves. Some bore labels with words he recognized - _corn, green beans, whole chicken -_ and some of the smooth cans closer to the floor bore the legend _Sprite_ in the same artistic manner as his instrument. Others spoke mysteries - _Spam, Fresca, WD-40, Bushmills, Kingsland Old Time Lager._

Whomever the Old Ones were, they were mightily fond of metal. This place was a shrine to it; what non-metallic items existed were few, as though someone had vehemently opposed the use of any other material.

More of the same stuff comprised a desk set to the right and center of the structure. Behind this, where Tal’feek imagined someone sitting and going on about administrative duties, humanoid-shaped metal occupied a chair with tiny wheels for feet. The metal mannequin’s center looked to be made of gold, head and limbs steel, and it sported two dark, hollow circles in lieu of eyes. The chassis wore more mystifying words: _Tolin 121-310-6-A, Fortune Reading, Many other Functions._ Below that: _Property of LaMerk Foundry, Subsidiary of the Sombra Corporation_. 

A blue-green velvet cloth had been spread out on the table. On the cloth sat a glass ball on a tri-pronged stand, several tidy stacks of cards, cabochon crystals inlaid with symbols he didn’t recognize, and what looked like a decorative plaque admonishing Tal’feek and anyone else who read it: LEAD ME NOT INTO TEMPTATION, FOR I SHALL FIND IT MYSELF.

 _Dad would like that._ He gave up the voice for an automated job, preparing himself to ask Razwan if she had room in her bag for the plaque. _Or Kree’arra. Armadyl knows I need all the good graces I can get to pass with my flight group next year._

His question died unspoken as humanoid metal went animate, flat blue light filling empty eye holes.

Its - their? - arm lifted and digits crooked at their party. “Be it ever so humble, and so it is. Travellers from afar, so say I, Tolin the Fortune-Teller. _Ein-zwei-drei!”_ The metal arm’s fluid movements became jerky at that last, as though its source had suffered a violent sneezing fit.

Tal’feek thought he understood now. “Are you an oracle?” 

  
  


………

  
  
  


Henry Leyden shuffled up to a kneel, feeling the concrete beneath his knees leeching warmth. He held himself there with a hand wrapped around a bar of his cage, listening, drawing mental fingertips over the textures in every word filtering down from upstairs.

 _“Ein-zwei-drei!”_ This from the programmed-eager voice bleeding smugness behind its can-I-help-you storefront. The murderous C3PO with a carnival bluster sounded as though he wasn’t doing well. Henry was pleased to hear it.  
  
“Are you an oracle?”

 _You’re a strange one._ Henry turned over the faintly malproduced words like a child tilting the seashell next to his ear, fascinated by what a little angling did to the sound. _Green as grass. And I’ll put ten on you never having sung “Star-Spangled Banner” along with the Green Bay crowd. Or Dallas, for that matter._

C3PO’s malevolent assembly line sibling babbled something, a repeat of his welcome or a version retooled for explanation, and Henry ignored it in favor of a new voice.

“Oracles tell the future. Everyone else is lying.”

Pretty voice, Henry thought, but a human one made with human vocal equipment. There was a story behind the mixture of amusement and accusation in her tone, but that interested him less than the rube-naiveté of the first one. Ears sharpened on the whetstone of talk radio knew the pipes were all wrong for a son of Adam or daughter of Eve.

 _That’s it, isn’t it?_ Henry wondered, a tinkle of _déjà vu_ further warping surreality. _Centaurs, fauns, and unicorns; did Aslan breathe your life back in the Snow Queen’s courtyard, my curious young friend? Because I’m getting some Narnia vibes out of you, yes indeedy, and why the hell not? Taheen are more Lewis than St. Louis._

Taheen, maybe. His captor had described them once, an animal-headed people in the service of some King, some threat to this desiccated carcass of a plane where George Lucas’s robots practiced astrology alongside human captivity. Taheen, Tower, and tales of an organization of Arthurian knights governed by Sergio Leone’s lead-dealer aesthetic. Someone’s tabletop fantasy game gone massively out of control.

He had a feeling there was no St. Louis - or indeed a Missouri of any kind - in this purgatory.

Another voice spoke up from above, this one unmuffled despite the trapdoor between it and Henry.

“Explain this place.”

Henry’s attention tightened from keen to brittle, lethal acuity.

The accent was wrong, of course. Badly wrong; this one was separated by an ocean’s worth of degrees from Leone’s West. An accent he’d once heard described as “BBC British” by a colleague, although this one seemed a hair removed. A close cousin. A half-brother to it.

But the voice. It was a little later in years than the actor’s lifespan would’ve allowed for, but there was no doubt. Henry’s hearing left no room for it.

_Even a blind man could see that’s John goddamned Wayne._

  
  
  


………

  
  
  


_Mi him, mi him en tow._

Nothing.

_En tow! Tak! Mi him en tow!_

Nothing answered the call. The _os pa_ writer, the spineless hack, had drawn from within himself a slender, gristly wire of unaccounted-for fortitude, collapsing the mineshaft and Tak’s connection between _ini_ and the surface of Desperation, Nevada. To the _timoh_ of that world, the animals it could inhabit. Shells on the paw, claw, and hoof.  
  
Tak’s eagle was gone. Coyote and wolf, gone. What digging vermin hadn’t escaped were now crushed and useless, more dirt in the making. Spiders and other crawling things remained, trapped, but lacked the complexity required of a host body. They were too small; even a thought toward possession would pop them like overripe grapes.

But.

But there were other worlds than these. Tak knew it. Even the rank human detritus of Desperation had known it, although conscious awareness existed nowhere in the archival memory of any mind it’d displaced with itself. The Tower was too soft-spoken in that world, but a place where life fell vulnerable to the _can tak_ would be marked in some way by the great sooty screw fastening existence to itself.

Only a thing woven by life’s creative forces could fall prey to the rending, endless malice of the unformed.

_Other worlds than these._

And the _ini_ was the Well of the Worlds, was it not?

Tak no longer reached for the things of the world above. It sank lower, deeper into the red pit of the _ini,_ home to the unformed. It slid over the inert pseudo-forms of other _can tak,_ sleepers, lazy things lulled to their inertness by the red, infected heartbeat of the Well.

It felt the pull. To slumber. To be lazy, to slump nestled among the others like globs of viscera rot-baking in subterranean heat.

_Hate. Form. Need form again._

Tak turned in a new direction, pushing. Defying the siren’s song, the sickened lullaby begging inactivity, complacency, malevolence in thought alone.

Finally, upward. From the central nexus of the _ini_ in a new direction, a new upward.

A breath of air. New air. _Worldly_ air. Stirred into the earth by working hands, hands controlling some primitive machine, digging and sifting, furrowing and burrowing.

Tak rose to it. Sniffing without a nose, drooling without salivary glands. Aching for all those things which allowed a body to ache.

_Can toi, can tak. Mi him, mi him en tow._

This time, something answered.

  
  
  


………

  
  
  
  


_Something’s wrong._

Ta’feek sat next to Nomad as the three of them accepted Tolin’s invitation and took chairs on their side of the desk. He heard his ka-mates peppering the fortune reader _(not an oracle,_ Tolin was quick to assure them, _ein-zwei-drei)_ with questions. 

He heard, “I’m an Asimov robot, assigned to provide amusing diversions to visitors, few though they are these days!” and found his focus drifting.

Tolin had curiously rounded feet. No toes, not for one such as he.

_Ein. When is a door not a door?_

“So someone just fucking left you here? Who?”

_When it’s ajar._

“Be not affronted on my behalf, lady-sai! It brings me joy - what of it I can feel, anyhow - to know your arrival has been met with such hospitality as I can offer. Refreshments and readings, including my trusty crystal ball.”  
  
_Zwei. When’s an oracle not an oracle? When he’s an Asimov row-boat._

The floor hadn’t been swept in some time. A sheer of dust lay atop the sectioned metal, scuffed and paisley-patterned where someone had walked hither and thither, occasionally hither and yon. Tolin reading the rune-Sprites to pass the time, maybe.

“Were we expected?”  
  
“After a fashion, sai. Projections comprised of recent beamquake occurrences and spatial-temporal anomalies indicated a twelve percent likelihood of incursion. I did what little I could to make the place cozy meanwhile. Shall I read the crystal for you?”

_Drei. When’s a cozy not a cozy? When it’s a cozening._

Lots of rounded depressions in the dust. _Furrowing and burrowing,_ Tal’feek thought, feeling distant in mind and body, untethered to the thought as a source. Unpleasantly so. Defensively so. Brain snatching at irrelevancies and playing with them like scraps of ribbon.

“Not yet, perhaps another time. Who left you to this task?”

_Ein-zwei-drei. Few, he said. Not just us._

Not all the prints were rounded; from somewhere behind Tal’feek and off to a far corner, one set broke the pattern. Foot-like, but sheared at the tips. Squared, not rounded. This set led to a larger metal square set in the floor among the others, and the dust around it had settled oddly, as though the square had coughed and blown the scrim away from itself.

_Dust. Hospitality and dust on the floor. Tolin left here like an open-closed shop sign. Sharp-feet, sharp-feet, brain is mostly wool._

“I’m afraid that information is classified as per Directive Fourteen, sai.” A feigned-regretful sigh. “Unless you care to try the password?”

_Ein-zwei-drei, when’s the truth not the truth? When it’s a lie._

But it was close, Tal’feek thought. It struck him with the resonance of truth that Tolin couldn’t lie, not exactly, but could sidestep the facts. He also had the idea whatever military had classified information about themselves under Directive Fourteen were as much long-ago dust as the stuff offering the other set of footprints to his eye again and again. Drawn there and drawing his attention.

“I don’t know your password.”

Razwan had been uncharacteristically quiet after her first indignant question. Though weaving in disconnection almost to the point of nausea, he reached for that which had operated in lieu of vocal conversation between them and aimed for her, this time purposefully. Swung, missed, then found it surprisingly responsive for something he hadn’t exercised intentionally until now.

 _[Razwan?]_ _  
__  
__[Hmm? You okay, kiddo?]_

_[Something’s wrong.]_

_Ein-zwei-drei, we’re running out of time._

Tolin’s builders - his _programmers -_ leaving him here. The squared footprints leading in, not out, and toward the back. Dust on the floor. _Read your fortune, sai? Read the crystal for you, sai?_

“A shame. I should very much like to tell you. Perhaps a crystal-reading in the meantime? Such things are oft dismissed as trivial but can shed enlightenment-”

 _[Is it Tolin? Are you worried about Tol-]_ _  
__  
_“-Another time.” Nomad’s command was stern.

“Then I’ll just set the ball aside, shall I?”

_Ein-zwei-drei. When is a crystal ball not a crystal ball? When it’s glass._

“Fine.”

Tal’feek felt panic rise up in his breast, forgetting speech as the need for defaults asserted itself treble. This time he didn’t direct his mind at Razwan but put it on blast, a shriek.

_[DON’T LET HIM TOUCH THE GLASS!]_

Sound erupted like cannonfire around him.

  
  
  


………

  
  
  


Henry’s heart leaped into his throat and lodged there. He’d heard Tolin’s test runs of the weapon system twice before, science fiction sounds accompanied by the lethal impact of something at various points throughout the room upstairs, a crossfire that left the shelves rattling loudly afterward.

“Then I’ll just set the ball aside, shall I?”

_Ah, shit._

But there was no Trekkian fusillade of energy weapons, no whiny reverb of agitated metal.

Henry thought again of John Wayne as God Himself roared twice through the barrels of guns.

  
  
  


………

  
  
  
  


_[DON’T LET HIM TOUCH THE GLASS!]_ _  
__  
_Nomad’s hands answered Tal’feek’s cry before Nomad himself could. There was no time for litany. He drew crossways and squeezed as he’d been taught, matching Tolin blue eye for blue eye, and killed with his heart.

Tolin’s searching hand shot wide of the ball. Nomad’s revolvers spoke and left no blue eyes alive save their wielder’s; Tolin’s burst like twin spells terminated before they could resolve. Asimov’s fortune-reader jerked, feet wheeling out and sending himself rolling back in the chair, the ricochet of the bullets in his chassis tinkling in comic impotence after their full-throated launch.  
  
A brief bleat cut off as one of the bullets found something vital within Tolin and put it to rest. A three-cycle of hissing intakes issued from somewhere low in the robot’s abdomen, then blew out, a death exhale as mechanized as the rest of him. Rounded heels caught delineations in the metal flooring and brought him to a stuttering halt.

Tolin didn’t move. Still, his visitors remained in their seats, unmoving, waiting. Nomad continued to point his revolvers at their host’s deanimate form.

Something viscous drooled from one of Tolin’s sockets and down his face like a fat tear.

“Is he-”

Nomad shook his head once in a curt gesture, guns trained and waiting. He heard Tal’feek’s question trail away.

 _[I don’t know.]_ _  
__  
__[I’m sorry for yelling.]_

Nomad spared a glance to his side. Tal’feek was outwardly calm, but the gunslinger-

_-no time to ponder that now-_

\- felt something of the chaos in the boy’s mind and decided silence did nothing for any of them. “You did well. It got my attention.”

Normally a glutton for anything even hinting of praise, Tal’feek remained withdrawn into himself and his response bore no reaction to Nomad’s words. “He lied. It’s glass, not crystal, so I knew he was lying.” He stroked a little talon over one of his other fingers as though comforting himself. “It was a setup. Don’t… touch it.”

Tolin’s inert form continued issuing mysterious ichor from the depths of his eye sockets, the body lifeless. Though caution was ever indicated, Nomad thought the critical sounds of depressurization had told the truth of the robot’s demise. He stood, holstering his weapons, and looked at Razwan. “Don’t-”  
  
“-touch our friend over there, yeah. I got that.” Her eyes moved briefly toward a far corner of the room. “I’ll stay with him.”

Nomad nodded and made his way to the corner that’d captured Tal’feek’s interest before he’d sounded the alarm in all their heads. He stood next to the single person-sized square depression in the floor, trying to glean intuition from the footprints, heeding his own hunch.

He tapped a hollow rhythm on it with the edge of his boot.

“Hey! Hey, now! Who’s up there?” A sharp voice came from beneath the panel.

Nomad paused as the situationally useless nature of any answer on offer struck him. He bent toward the square. “Strangers! Who are you? Are you with the fortune-teller?”

The voice from below sounded wry. “I’m what you might call a guest under duress, stranger.” A pause, and the same voice accommodated both uncertainty and hope. “Heard gunfire. You liquidate his assets, I take it?”

“You could say that.” Nomad spared a glance backward then crouched low, holding a hand over the floor panel. “Can you free yourself, or do you need our help?”

“I’m in lockup, I’m afraid. Should be safe to come down; he never tested any systems down here and I don’t suppose there are any, but have a care just in case.”

Nomad decided “systems” had to’ve been of the security variety. He didn’t share the other man’s assumption entire, but it seemed an abysmal thing to leave him to wither in captivity after putting an end to his captor. He wedged his fingertips along the space between the wide panel and the rest of the floor, nudging it open, braced for whatever might or magic might rebuke him. “I’ll make no promises.”  
  
  
  
………

  
  
  


Razwan assisted Henry through the door of Repository Fourteen and out into the afternoon sunlight. Though he held her arm, she nevertheless felt as though he led her as Asgarnian noblemen sometimes led noblewomen down streets and through the halls of castles, old manners that’d long ago lost their gendered connotations and were donned in the manner of antique clothes, indulgent and redolent of contextless nostalgia. It was charmingly bereft of assumption, and she decided she liked it.

Breeze crossed them her to him, and Henry inhaled appreciatively. “It’s been a long time since I smelled beautiful.”

She snorted a laugh, startled but charmed. “Cute. Does that line really work for you?”

“No, never for me.” Henry smiled and nudged his oddly-shaped sunglasses further up the bridge of his nose. “I’m not sure it’d even work for Al Pacino off the silver screen.”

“Who?”

Henry patted her arm with his free hand. “Just a man who earned a few awards for playing many, many versions of Al Pacino over the course of his career.”

Razwan pondered it and decided she parsed enough to understand his meaning, if not the specifics. They stopped, listening for a moment as Nomad and Tal’feek spoke in mixed businesslike and excited tones, the other pair still inside and taking inventory of the repository’s supplies. 

Tal’feek had investigated the other Sprite cans earlier, plucking at the tabs, intuiting the mechanism and cracking one open. The sound startled them all, but the novelty of the bubbling drink interested Tal’feek back from his withdrawal, and so everyone had crowded around him to share in the mystery.

Henry, upon being told what was writ upon the can, had pronounced it safe to drink. The other three then took turns sampling, each declaring it foul beyond measure, and now Tal’feek was amusing himself by shaking the cans and popping them open, hosing down the walls and cheeping his unselfconscious delight for all to hear.

Razwan quietly treasured the sound and spoke to Henry. “We’re in a mess, all of us. I don’t know where we’re going or if we can go home.”

Her companion seemed to mull this over. “You say that as though the job of solving it falls to you.”

“That tends - tended, I guess - to happen a lot where I’m from.” She watched as Nomad and Tal’feek wrangled a pullcart through the door and out into the sunshine. “I got put in the position of running interference between the Powers that Be and the people they have power over. I solved it or life got rapidly uncomfortable for me.”

“I’ve been a target for middle-management hostilities once or twice.” Henry shifted weight on his feet and rolled his head, looking like a man still relishing freedom of movement after a long deprivation. “Damn, that feels like a slice of Heaven.”

She looked up at him. “How did you get here?”

“I died.”

They were silent for a moment as his words hung in the air between them.

“Died?”

“Well…” Henry turned his face into the sun, “...I think so, anyway. I was caught in my recording studio by a fella who’s not known for leaving people with their vitals running. Passed out from blood loss, woke up in the company of our dead robot friend in there.”

“He healed you?”

“Don’t think he’s the healing type.” Henry sounded a little tired. “I woke up shy a few stab wounds and my bearings, and old Tolin the Fortune-Teller escorted me down into that little dungeon of his.”

Razwan looked away from him, blinking the beginnings of sun-blindness out of her eyes. “I was hoping you knew a little more about this than we do.”

“Sorry I can’t help, pretty lady.” He sounded genuinely regretful. “To be honest, I’d been hoping this strange old world was your home turf, too.”

Razwan looked over toward the repository building as Nomad approached them. She saw Tal’feek emerging from the doorway with armfuls of cans, pausing and stooping to unload and sort his finds on the cart.

“I found this in the room beneath the floor.” Nomad reached out with a thin leather satchel and rested it against Henry’s free hand. “It looked newer than anything else down there. Yours?”

Henry opened his hand and grasped the bag, letting go Razwan’s arm and running fingers over the draw-clasp before pressing it open and loosening the top. He stuck his hand in, rooting around the contents in a meticulous but eager way, then smiled. “Well, that… hold the phone, folks.”

He withdrew something lonk from the bag, a length of rough-hewn, sooty stone shot through with a spider’s web of milky crystal, and held it aloft. “This doesn’t come standard with my usual.”

Razwan stared at it blankly, disbelieving.

Nomad leaned in, giving it a suspicious once-over. “It looks like a wand.”

Blood pumped a small beat of ocean along the shoreline in her ears. “No. No, I know what that is. It’s-”  
  
“The Dark Tower.”  
  
They turned as one, and Razwan recognized the newcomer immediately.

Parkus, arms folded, nodded at their collective stare. “Not ours, but it is.” His grim, weatherbeaten face broke in a smile. “And you recognize it, don’t you?”

Razwan nodded dully at him. “It’s the Needle. It’s from our world.”

Parkus resumed walking toward the little group, joining them and surveying the object for himself. “Needle, do ya. Fits, since the Tower threads the worlds together.”

“It’s good to see you again, Parkus.” Nomad spoke from next to Razwan.

“Had a feeling about you three. Came back to see why it felt as though the world was shuddering in her boots.” Parkus reached out and grazed Henry’s knuckles with his hand. “Name’s Parkus.”

“Henry.” They shook, then Henry hefted the Needle. “Little light for a Tower, even a good model.”

Parkus laughed at that. “That’s no model. If we’re lucky, it’s your way home.”

All four stilled at his words. Razwan spoke, swallowing back the fear she might be cursing the first sign of promise since they’d arrived. “Home?”

“That’d be my wager.” Parkus held up his hand in a stopping gesture. “But, before you do, you’re needed.”

She felt the rush of relieved excitement shift, making room for irritation. “Needed? We _need_ to go home!”

“And you will.” Parkus’s gesture wavered, growing placating. “This isn’t out of your way.” He looked at Nomad. “You know why.”

“You need me.” Nomad sounded strangely resigned, yet almost eager. “Us, but mostly me. Isn’t that the way of it?”

“So it is.” Parkus let his hand drop. “Calla Bryn Sturgis is a few days’ trek from here.” He looked over at where Tal’feek had finished arranging his cans, the boy himself walking over to join them, then back at Nomad. “The Manni are there, and they can help get you started. But the Calla’s people seek aid and succor.”

“They need a gunslinger.” Nomad’s voice was grimly satisfied.

Parkus nodded, sounding pleased despite his own grim expression. “They need a hand of the Eld once again.” He paused. “Will you?”

Razwan looked over at him, ready to argue, but he offered no moment in which to do it before he answered Parkus.

“You already know my answer.”

“Now wait just a damned minute.” Henry spoke up, wiggling the Needle in Parkus’s general direction. “Not to spoil all your fun and grandeur, folks, but I’d be mighty appreciative if someone would tell me what the hell’s going on.”

Parkus uncrossed his arms and hooked his thumbs in his gun belt. “Fairly asked. The short answer is, something that should've stayed belowground and hasn't.” He looked over at Tal’feek and smiled. “Still a glutton for storytelling around the campfire, son?”

Tal’feek’s cheek feathers bushed out in his own smile. “Yessir. Will you stay with us?”

“I will.” Parkus glanced over at Repository Fourteen. “Get what you need, and I’ll start the fire and get Henry situated.”  
  
They began to disperse, and Razwan bristled at the sight of it. “Hold the fuck on!”

“Razwan.”

She looked over at Parkus, stricken with the urge to hook a right into his grim face. “What?”

“A night. It’s all I’m asking.” He sounded unperturbed by her outburst, almost eerily calm.

She felt herself responding to it, but ground out her question. “Why?”

Parkus looked over at Nomad, and so did she.

Nomad had stopped, and now looked at her with that same immutable gaze he wore almost always. “I am what I am.”

“You weren’t a damned gunslinger a few weeks ago.” She was losing ground and she knew it.

“I wasn’t,” he agreed, “but I’ve always been what I am.”

For that, she had no answer.

They stocked supplies as Parkus built the fire, then spent the evening in its warmth and held palaver.

In the morning, they struck west toward Calla Bryn Sturgis.

**Author's Note:**

> * - The line, "it's been a long time since I smelled beautiful," is quoted from the movie _Scent of A Woman,_ featuring Al Pacino. Pacino's character compliments his dance partner with it.
> 
> ** - Both Parkus and Henry Leyden are characters from Stephen King's novel _Black House_ (a play on the title of Charles Dickens's _Bleak House)._
> 
> ***Tal'feeks dissociative state (and subsequent withdrawal into himself) relies heavily on my own experience with both, and is not intended to portray any singular/"most accurate" general experience. The feelings, intensity, and other presentation elements can vary strongly between individuals.


End file.
